The Fighter's Lighter
by Vampire121208
Summary: My take on the Booth black-out scene from Fire in the Ice...a little different from my usual. please review! rated T for some strong language...


**Set after "Fire In The Ice"!**

**A:N? as awesome as last nights two episodes were, I couldn't help but feel this little tug when I bed last night and looked at my computer. I haven't written for quite a long time so it would be greatly appreciated if you could keep that in mind as you read (and hopefully enjoy!) this little angel my muse dropped off when I got home today.**

**Dis.: Don't own Bones!**

His head hit the ice, his vision blurring into a million different colors. The ice was cool on the back of his head, and as the vibrant colors faded from bright to light to gone, he felt himself slipping into darkness.

His body felt numb, and for the first time in years he felt no pain. Lying there peacefully, he focused on his breathing and relishing in the feeling of no pain for once in what felt like forever.

But all of a sudden it wasn't dark. No. It was eerily white when he sat up, and the cold ice of the rink was replaced with warm sand. He licked his lips, looking around him, trying to discern where he was. They tasted dry and leathery, like he remembered they always had been back in his Ranger days. Taking a deep breath, he swallowed and willed himself to his feet. Legs wobbling, but still standing, he surveyed the dry desert around him. When he realized that he was alone and in the middle of nowhere, with nothing to help him survive, his legs collapsed and he fell face first into the hot sands of the desert dunes.

His lungs fill with sand so he forces himself over onto his back and curls into a small ball, coughing up dirt and sand as he wipes his eyes.

He hadn't missed any of this.

Slowing reopening them, a flash of light catches his attention and he's on his hands and knees in a matter of seconds, crawling a few feet away. A lighter lays half buried on top of the sand, the initials S.B.D engraved on the fine sliver.

Enamored by the shiny and familiar lighter, Booth reaches out, wrapping his sand encrusted hand around it.

It stings him, making him jerk back while letting out a growl of annoyance.

Seconds later he reaches once more for the lighter, unable to resist its unnatural draw.

This time, his fingers tug it free from its resting place and he clenches it in his palm.

Abruptly his world goes dark once more until he reawakens on a linoleum floor. This time he is face down, his nose pressed to the stained and well worn tile. Immediately he recognizes it as his childhood kitchen. He notices the scuffs and dents his various sport's cleats have made in the tiling, and feels an all too late wave of guilt for punishing the floor so badly.

A burning sensation in his palm brings him back from his close reverie of the flooring. Sitting upright, not even attempting to stand, he unclenches his fingers and finds the lighter still molded to his now clean palm.

S.B.D is polished and easy to read on the front of the lighter and when Booth flicks it open to attempt lighting it, another familiar thing happens.

A dry cough echoes from the doorway of the room and immediately Booth stands and bows his head in the direction of the door like he had been ingrained to do as a child.

"Sir." He barks, unable to control his return to childhood regiment.

"Seeley, give me back my lighter. You know I don't like you kids playing with it. You could burn this shit-shack down and then where would your mother have to bitch at me?" His father says, his words mumbled from the cigarette held between his leathery lips.

Booth, his eyes still trained on the floor, reaches out and feels his father clasp the lighter in his own work worn hand.

"That's a good boy." His father praises, meaning that Seeley can now lift his head. The man standing before him has not aged one single decade. He still looks like he's in his early thirties, with the world at his finger tips. Not like the other man Booth remembers. A middle aged father who got drunk for no reason but boredom, and who beat for no reason but sport.

"Seeley, you mind telling your old man what the fuck is going on?" his father asks, a look of genuine concern on his face. But then it's gone as soon as it came. Once more his thin face is emotionless and his grey eyes are steel cold.

"Nothing, Sir. I just got mixed up in some trouble and their looking into it. Nothing to get upset about, honestly." Seeley confesses, hoping his voice sounds less scared shitless to his father than it does to him.

"Well that's the biggest load of bull crap I've ever heard pitched." Declares his father who without warning smashes a full bottle of something, brown and pungent, on the floor. Booth remains still, remembering all too well the many times he tried to fight back only to be beaten beyond his strength.

"Now look at what you did asshole. Your mother's gonna have to come in here and clean this. What with her condition and all, I feel plain ashamed of you. You are sure one sorry sack of shit." His father denounces his words slurred and sloppy. Suddenly drunk, the man from moments ago has aged at least ten years, grey hair peppering his full head of dark hair.

"I'm telling the truth Sir, honestly." Booth demands, trying to control his every growing need to punch out his father.

"Yea, and I'm really a fucking doctor and not a shitless, mindless factory worker. Just like you're not some idiot in a penguin suit who can't even talk to the woman you love, let alone sleep with her." Hisses his father, tone laced with disgust and hatred.

Something snaps in that moment.

"I didn't kill him! Everyone keeps saying it wasn't me, but deep down their all wondering if it really was. Even Bones! Oh God, even Bones thinks I'm a murder even though she would never say it!" Seeley howls, frustration and desperation explodes with him as he crashes his fist through the dry walling of the kitchen wall.

The room is silent.

Seeley haves deep breaths and his father takes deep slurps of something from a rumpled plastic bag.

"Out of your system son?" asks his father, voice calm and tone level. He slurps one more drink before placing the bottle on the counter beside him.

Striding to stand in front of his oldest son, he places both hands on Seeley's shoulders and stares him in the eye. Something he hadn't done since Seeley told him he was leaving for the army.

"You need to know that here, this kinda of shit is allowed. But when you go home son, it's not. You're gonna get older, and you're gonna get more like me. I can't tell you it won't happen. I'm what you saw growing up, what you thought was a real man for a long time. But I'm not. I'm a drunk who beats his defenseless kids. You don't have to be me. You aren't me." His father's voice is smooth now, sober, like a cold class of water. He isn't slurring and he isn't cussing. He's being a father for the first time that Booth can honestly remember.

"Okay." Is all Booth says, rubbing his knuckles where their swelling from the impact.

"And son?" he questions.

"Yea sir?" He sighs, eyes suddenly heavy with exhaustion. His father still stands ahead of him, but seemingly growing farther and farther away from him.

"She feels the same." Is all he says before Seeley Booth's world jolted back to reality.

**A/N: please review and while you're there, would be so kind as to tell me whether you like the idea of this continuing on or whether it should be kept a one shot. **


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